


Doubting Thomas

by techieturnover



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Ableist Language, Canon Compliant, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Memory Alteration, Oglepthorpe's plantation, Past Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Songfic, WE NEED A BETHLEM TAG, and then listened to too much nickel creek, bethlem, character study / thomas centric, for uhhh the most part, historical references applied liberally and without regard for timelines, miranda is mentioned but she doesn't appear, that time where i was like 'hey i haven't written a memory loss fic for this fandom yet!'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23071513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/techieturnover/pseuds/techieturnover
Summary: ~~ON HIATUS FOR A REWRITE~~Thomas wonders what that means for him - that he is so complacent in the face of his own destruction.A little memory/character study about Thomas' time in Bethlem, his recovery afterwards, finding something he still believes in and then of course, finding James.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton
Comments: 26
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As of 10/16 DT is on hiatus as I rewrite the first few chapters and actually finish the darn thing. I'm making steady progress so this ISNT an abandoned fic, but it will be significantly different in its final form than what it initially was going to be, and the chapters up now will be undergoing a rewrite of their own.
> 
> Lyrics and title are from 'Doubting Thomas' by Nickel Creek which is Very Sad and you should listen to it. The other two chapters are finished just undergoing editing, so they should be posted by weeks' end. IT'S NOT A WIP GUYS I PROMISE.
> 
> Huge giant thank you to Apfelessig for being my beta on this and telling me when I was not making sense. ALSO shout out to yourgaydads and gayjackrackham for their input!

_What will be left when I've drawn my last breath  
Besides the folks I've met and the folks who've known me  
Will I discover a soul-saving love  
Or just the dirt above and below me_

\-----

Certainty has become a stranger to Thomas.

If he tries, Thomas can remember a time he was certain of a great many things. Politics, morality, society, his place within them. Now, everything he does comes a half-second later; there is a half-step of hesitance before any action he takes.

They tell him he went mad; Thomas believes them. It is maddening to not trust himself - and Thomas knows its intimacies.

He isn’t sure of the exact moment he lost his mind. He knows it happened - he knows that he has been committed to Bethlam because of it. He knows he is not better yet because he still remembers things from his brush with insanity. Shining red hair, two loving smiles and two pairs of hands reaching for him. Words whispered between them, a trust born of a common goal that had felt unbreakable.

He remembers screaming, when they first brought him here. Panic and pleas and insisting that he wasn’t mad. They’d told him he was not able to see properly, that the devils that had taken him still had their grip on him. That he couldn’t trust what they whispered, the comforting lies they told. 

Peter has told him what really happened, of course. His doctors have told him. 

They have told him and bled him and told him and bathed him in ice water and told him again, until he cannot remember the details of his old life.

They tell him the doubt is a part of healing, that once he has begun to second guess what he thinks is true - but cannot be - that they can truly begin to help him.

This is what he is told:

Miranda had taken James McGraw - his liaison to the Navy and best friend - as a lover, and the two had conspired against him. They had plotted to make him look the fool so they could run away together and the betrayal had caused him to go mad - to imagine things that hadn’t really happened to save his heart.

As part of their plot, James convinced him to propose a plan that would cause immeasurable damage to the British Empire. In a time of war, mercy was not an option and cowardice even less so. Peter had stepped in to see James and Miranda removed from his side, asking for the aide of his father to see Thomas helped.

It doesn’t add up, not with what he remembers. 

It doesn’t make sense with Miranda crying as he was taken away. It doesn’t make sense with the memory of James that morning - for once asking _him_ to stay in bed. None of what the doctors have said in however long he has been here - weeks? Months? - makes sense. Not with what he holds in his head.

Then again between the lapsing of time and the hazes he falls into when a fever or delirium takes him, little does.

By now Thomas has learned to stop asking questions. What they call doubt he has taken to calling acquiescence. He doesn’t know how long it has been since he’s come to Bethlam but he does know that if he doesn’t ask questions they won’t make him go in the ice baths. If he allows them to help him and does not try and force his delusions to be reality - to make himself sicker - they have promised that eventually treatment can be almost pleasant. They want him to get better, after all.

He had promised Peter he would try to get better, at one point. He isn’t sure when. Peter makes sure to bring it up every time he visits though, so it must have happened. He allows the indignities and the affront to what he had once called right and even sacred because of it, and tries not to feel sick at himself.

He doesn’t spend long thinking about the life he used to lead. Instead he spends his time reciting bible verses out loud and trying to forget and trying to convince them he believes what they’ve told him. 

Somewhere dark and deep he hopes that if he can survive long enough, he will stop feeling guilty about not being strong enough to fight for the memories he holds. One day, he hopes, he will stop apologizing to the ghosts of lovers who never existed, for allowing his fear to silence whatever truths their tears hold.

\-----

Thomas wakes from a dream - a memory? a nightmare? - in which he and Miranda and James are sitting together in his study. Miranda has her arms around his shoulders as she and James share a smile. He can’t recall what the smile is for. 

He wonders if he will ever leave Bethlam and, if he does, if he will be able to keep his wits. Or if the madness will come creeping back like this. If he will start thinking these dreams are reality again.

Screaming from the next cell interrupts his thoughts. Hoarse and agonizing, the voice belongs to the old man the doctors call Henry. Henry stopped communicating with words two weeks after Thomas arrived. Truly gone mad, he cries and screams at no one, when nothing is around. Both Thomas’ days and nights are punctuated with Henry’s haunting sounds. 

Thomas doesn’t cry out anymore. He’s learned from Henry that it doesn’t help.

He remembers how Whitehall used to whisper of his madness - Cassandra’s gossipers, as he’s taken to thinking of them. How he had been determined to pay them no mind, until after their predictions came true. How he had thought his faith in himself could save him.

Now, he remains silent unless he is spoken to - so much so that the guards have taken to calling him Silent Tom. He takes his medicine without a fight. Doesn’t cause trouble when they take him to the baths or his bleedings. He’s pleasant, they all say. Thomas wonders what that means for him - that he is so complacent in the face of his own destruction. Once he would have argued for the virtue of taking the shortcomings of one’s life with grace. Now it just makes bile rise in his already raw throat.

Miranda’s smile comes back to him.

As another of Henry’s screams echoes, Thomas wonders if perhaps it wouldn’t be kinder to let him be mad. 

\---

His father is dead.

Peter has come to visit him, to tell him his father is dead; killed in cold blood by pirates.

“James McGraw was on the crew that did it,” Peter says. He wonders if that means Peter has seen James, but he knows better than to ask.

“Surely this should cement what I’ve been telling you as truth. The man wanted nothing for you but ruin. He may have been planning to turn pirate from the start.” 

Peter says the words as if they should be the final nail in a coffin Thomas has already been buried in.

He hears himself agreeing. He supposes it’s true but more importantly, it is what Peter wants to hear.

“I’m glad you’re getting better, Thomas. Truly, it’s so good to have hope that one of my dearest friends might recover from the horrors life has thrust upon him.”

_-like a rocky promontory-_

The words flit through his mind, echoes of Peter’s. Thomas knows what they’re from. Half an image follows them before Thomas quickly dismisses it. 

The echo and the image of James as a pirate fills his mind, despite how he tries to concentrate on Peter’s words. Does that mean James and Miranda are in Nassau? If they are, what does that mean for the plan they had helped him craft?

Peter stays for a bit, tells Thomas about how much his daughter Abigail has grown since he was in London last. How the Carolinas are full of disease and backwater merchants. 

“-and I know you find the practice abhorrent but the new location really is an excellent spot for the importing of slaves from the Bahamas.”

He remains quiet and Peter takes his leave - “I understand you need your rest. It’s good to see you, old friend.” Thomas doesn’t acknowledge his exit; only sits, quietly, contemplating. He knows he should feel sorrow at his father’s passing. After all, his father is the one who brought him here so that he might recover. He should feel anger too, perhaps, at James for the act.

And yet -

Something still doesn't add up. Hard as he tries to take Peter’s words as truth his mind still whispers to him. So Thomas sits, and thinks. Sits, and thinks, and waits for his medicine to help him make sense of everything again.

\-----

“Isn’t that Lord Hamilton’s son?” 

“The one ‘went mad with grief because his wife was buggering a navy man?”

Thomas can’t see the men clearly through the window in his door, but he doesn’t have to. He keeps his gaze steady, straight through the window to the wall the taller one is obscuring. They’re all the same, and he finds he can tell more from their voices than the people themselves at any rate. 

It’s become a passtime, of sorts. While they watch him, he listens to them. Sees how long it takes before his gaze discomfits them and they move on to another. The shrieking amuses them. His silence unsettles. 

It is the one act of defiance he allows himself, under the pretense of dumbness. He may be mad and broken, but under the gaze of those who can do nothing to him, he remains unashamed of his fate. 

He studies the way their shadows shift, uncomfortable, when they realize their gossip does not affect him. How their conversation stills as they move quickly to another. Henry is always a favorite. 

Every so often he will get one, always singular, who will look at him as silently as he looks back. Who will stay a still, silent shadow until another visitor disturbs them. It is these visitors he learns the most from; who teach him that even on the outside, madness persists. 

\-----

It is some time later when Peter comes to visit him again. Thomas isn’t sure if it has been mere months or a year or more. He only knows it has been some time. Inside the hospital it matters very little whether it is July or December, except for whether he will misbehave for an ice bath, or trade whatever small favors he can for another blanket.

“The doctors say you’ve made amazing progress, my friend. They think you’re ready.”

Ready? 

“For what?”

“To start reintegrating into society of course! Perhaps not back to London. You’re still much too sensitive for the types of games politicians play, but I’ve found you a quiet place in the colonies where you can continue recovering. There is a place very near the Carolinas - which have finally begun to turn a profit under my governorship, thank God - where men such as yourself are allowed a modest but productive role in society.” 

It strikes him, the phrasing Peter uses. -men such as yourself-

Something about Peter is off. Has it always been off? The man himself does not seem different so perhaps it is simply Thomas’ mind finally clearing and allowing him to notice details he had previously been missing. 

Thomas knows Peter is expecting some kind of reaction to the news of his release. Pleasure, happiness. Thomas thinks of the other visitors he has had, and he notices how Peter shifts away at his lack of response. 

\----

Henry dies soon after Peter’s visit, his screaming cut off sharp and sudden some time after supper. Thomas tries not to focus on why the quiet seems so deafening.

\----

Two weeks later, he is on a ship bound for the new world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas leaves Bethlem for the New World

_I'm a doubting Thomas  
I took a promise  
But I do not feel safe  
Oh me of little faith_

\------ 

His first thought when they disembark in the New World is of how much space there is. The port of Charles Town is large but the town is unfinished in many places; the only fully erected barricades are around the port and half-built houses litter its edges. Beyond the rise of the walls though, Thomas can see a multitude of treetops and mountains in the distance. He lets his mark as a half-wit allow him a slow descent off the ship, and takes the time to appreciate the view. 

A man steps into Thomas’ line of sight, drawing his attention away from the wilderness. Thomas recognizes disdain in the man’s gaze.

“This is him?”

“Yes, the man Lord Ashe sent in our care - bit of a spooky one if you ask me. Hasn’t said two words together since we left London. The crew will be glad to be rid of him - bad luck to have an idiot aboard.” 

Thomas shifts his gaze back to the sliver of mountains he can still see.

“Fine. Mr. Tomlin, my name is Captain Rhett. Follow me.” 

Who?

There isn’t anyone else around, and both the other men are staring at him expectantly. Thomas feels something like fear grip him. It seems like such a little thing, holding onto a name that has no meaning anymore. But it’s _his_.

The other man only seems to grow more irritated by his silence.

_“Tomlin, now.”_

Thomas follows. 

When later Thomas tries to correct him, Rhett just sneers. “Thomas Hamilton died in Bethlem sixteen months ago. And you’ve got enemies the Lord Ashe doesn’t want to find you. So, if you please Mr. Tomlin.”

The bile that settles in his throat doesn’t leave for the rest of the day.

It takes them the better part of two days to reach their destination. During the journey, Thomas learns that Captain Rhett is a man who loves to hear himself talk almost as much as he hates pirates. Thomas is not quite hungry for news of the outside world but he feigns interest in Rhett’s venom. Despite everything his doctors at Bethlem instilled in him, he still listens for James’ name.

When Rhett tires of speaking, Thomas studies the landscape out the window of the carriage. They travel through grassland and forest alike and a small part of him - so small it goes almost unnoticed - marvels at how large this New World is. It had been described to him of course, but even in the countryside of London, even on his trips to Paris and Berlin, the world had never felt this vast. He feels something open up inside of him at that - a yearning for what this place could be that is so familiar it almost slips past him. 

The moment he recognizes it - bright and gasping for air - he tamps it down. He’s not out of the care of his doctors for two months and already he is slipping. 

They arrive outside heavy, formidable gates, and Rhett leaves him in the care of a man who looks like he cannot be any older than Thomas himself. 

“Governor Ashe said he would like a report when Mr. Tomlin is settled in,” Rhett says as Thomas sees money exchange hands. 

A shiver runs through him. 

Thomas isn’t sure what exactly the money is supposed to buy but he doubts it is his freedom. As he is led away from the gates they pass short rows of crops with men working them. Others with rifles watch those men, and Thomas realizes with a sinking feeling where it is he has been sent. Certainly not freedom, then.

Owing to his condition he is given the day to adjust, he is told. Instead of the fields he is taken to a small building on the edge of one of the fields. It looks recently and hastily put together, composed of a single large room with bunked beds lining two of the walls, and an empty area he assumes is to be their living space. 

When he is alone, he sits on his bed and stares at nothing. It’s familiar.

\--------

The next morning Thomas is put to work building rows for what he is told will be cotton plants. The first day he works slowly and meticulously, unsure of how much error to allow in the unfamiliar task. One of the other men working the field sidles up to him.

“You’re working too hard. They don’t care what you’re doing, just that it looks like you’re doing it. Watch me.” 

Thomas looks over to see the other man striking the ground quick and light, barely moving anything around as he does.

They work beside each other until the other man outpaces Thomas. His hands are still raw and chafed when the day ends, but he is able to eat something of supper before he falls asleep.

He forgets to ask the man's name.

\-------

Peter does visit him, once. 

When Thomas asks him how long he will work here before he is freed, Peter looks away.

“Mr. Oglethorpe has assured me that you’ll be treated well here - the work, he says, is rewarding for many of the men.”

“Until I die, then.” 

“Is there somewhere else you'd like to go?”

The words are needlessly harsh and Thomas rolls his tongue inside his mouth. Even sick as he is, there are quite a few places he'd like to be rather than a laborer’s camp. But he doesn't say anything else, and Peter doesn't apologize.

\--------

Savannah is hotter than Thomas has ever experienced and he falls to heat stroke the first summer he spends in the fields. While he is bedridden, he lets himself imagine James is sitting at his bedside and Miranda is the one changing the cold towels that appear on his forehead. 

Sick as he is, he finds he can find neither the reason nor the strength to fight them off. They bring him comfort and it is, he reasons in his delirium, all right to be mad while one is sick. Surely the spectres will fall silent when he is well again. Either that or he’ll die, and what he sees now will make no difference at all, then.

The delusions had led him to sin back in London - and to behavior unfit for society; to plotting a course of action no sane man would take against criminals. But here, in a sick bed unable even to feed himself - what harm can they do?

The fever fades but Thomas finds his ghosts do not. 

All of the false memories he has tried so hard to suppress start creeping back and he finds it difficult to parse them from the ones he was told were real. 

When he is cleared to return to field work he feels different. More irritable and angry. He no longer tunes everything out, keeping his head down, working himself until he is drained. Now his head is filled with conflicting memories and he finds himself distracted, attention drawn to every conversation, every word spoken and every sound that is not of his own making. It is agonizingly torturous, all the sounds drawing equal attention in his mind until he wants to scream.

His physical weakness does not help his attention - he has to stop every few minutes to catch his breath. 

“Keep working, Tomlin.” One of the guards calls to him from the edge of the field. Thomas grits his teeth but does as the guard says. He isn’t stupid enough to try and pick a fight. Stupid enough, or brave enough. He thinks James - the real one or the one in his false memories - would have been brave enough.

\---------

By late July his body has mostly adjusted to the work. His palms have calloused over and muscle memory has formed from the work. But now it is harvesting season, and the change in routine is exhausting him all over again. He finds he barely has the energy to eat dinner and even then he is far too tired to taste any of it. Thomas drops on his bed as soon as he can when the day is over. The guards are pushing them to get the crops harvested, apparently due to the heavy storms that will come later in the season. The increased workload means that Thomas is among those singled out, new and slow as he is.

The other men are milling about, and Thomas listens to their conversations to drown out the noise inside his head. One voice draws closer than the rest and he feels someone lean over the bed.

“You keep lettin’ them treat you like shit they’re just gonna keep doing it, you know.” 

Turning his head towards the voice, he sees a man he knows as Robert Evans. Robert has brown hair, with the kind of shaggy cut he thinks makes him look roguish but really just makes him look boyish. He’s young - younger than Thomas is at least, with the kind of infectious personality Thomas used to cultivate. In a way, Robert reminds him of James. He isn’t afraid of a fight. He’s been talking about escape since the first time Thomas met him. 

“You don’t remember me, do you?” 

And at that, Thomas almost has to laugh. 

“Who is it you think I’ll remember? I went mad. Even if we did know each other, it’s likely as not I’ll have misremembered you. I try not to dwell on a past I might have made up entirely.”

“You weren’t mad.” 

Something in Thomas rails against the surety with which Robert says it. He was mad. He had to have been. Peter had said. He can trust Peter. “Sixteen months in Bethlem Royal Hospital would suggest otherwise.”

“You weren’t mad. I remember you, Thomas Hamilton, and you weren’t mad.” 

...He _was_ , though. Wasn’t he?

Thomas rolls all the way over and sits up, looking up at Robert properly. “We knew each other, in London?” 

“Only briefly. My parents sent me here when they realized what a radical I was set to become. Suppose it didn’t help they found me fucking Phillip Dunster, either.” There is something in the story that catches Thomas’ breath. A familiarity he can’t quite wrap his senses around. He feels like he’s holding two equal weights in his head but one should be heavier than the other. He can’t remember which it is. 

But Phillip Dunster’s name he does remember. 

“You were Dunster’s lover?” When Robert nods it’s a lifeline, something urgent that opens up inside of Thomas and he grabs hold of it with both hands. 

“My God then you’ve been here all that time?” 

“I think it’s been about two years now. I was one of the first.” Robert sounds cheerier than Thomas thinks he has any right to be. “What landed _you_ in Bethlem?”

“I-” 

“And don’t say you went mad.”

Thomas stops, the uncertainty taking his voice away. Again the damned silence of uncertainty. He wants to speak. To say - something. Anything. What would he say? 

But the words won’t come. Robert waits a bit, shifting on his feet until it’s clear Thomas isn’t going to answer. 

“A bit of advice from that man you don’t remember being? It’s no use living if you live as if you’re already dead.”

He leaves but Thomas doesn’t move to lay back down. Instead, he lets the words turn over in his mind. They bring others, phrases and vague notions of belief that he spends the night piecing back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOOO BUDDY. So this went through a giant rewrite between this and the first chapter, which is why it took me so long to get this up. IT's going in a somewhat different direction than I'd originally intended, but what can you do, Thomas Hamilton. Might notice there are added chapters... please blame thomas i had no part in this.
> 
> I'm using history as a VERY LOOSE BASIS for some of the stuff that happens and will happen, namely the building of charlestown and that oglethorpe only actually ran the plantation for about ten years. So I'm assuming in this canon thomas arrived pretty early in the running of it.
> 
> Anyway i really wanna thank everyone who told me they liked the first chapter and i REALLY would love it if everyone could buy a cake for aroundofgwent because they're just like. the greatest. ever. 
> 
> ANYWAY ENJOY.


	3. Chapter 3

_Sometimes I pray for a slap in the face  
Then I beg to be spared cause I'm a coward  
If there's a master of death I bet he's holding his breath  
Cause I show the blind and tell the deaf  
About his power_

\-----------

_A familiar knock on the study door draws Thomas’ attention. He calls for Miranda to enter before resuming running his fingers through the soft strands of James’ hair - admiring how they shine in the fire’s light. He has to tilt his head back to see her, resting as he is against the arm of the lounge he and James are laying on. It’s almost too warm - laid out as he is with his Lieutenant pressed against him and the fire crackling in the hearth. Outside, the cold of autumn has just started to set in but in this room there is none of its chill._

_“Won’t you come join us?”_

_Miranda raises an eyebrow when she draws near, a tray of food in her hands._

_“And where exactly would I sit?”_

_“Plenty of room on top of Thomas, still,” James offers, a cheeky grin pulling at one corner of his mouth. Miranda returns the look before she motions for Thomas to sit up. He does so, but only halfway so as not to disturb James. It’s enough, though, that Miranda can sit where his shoulders had been, so that when he lies down again this time it is with his head in her lap._

_She looks down at him, her hair falling in gentle ringlets around her face today and he can’t help but reach up to one of them. “You look lovely.” She flushes with the compliment._

_“I thought you two might be interested in a light lunch but it seems i’m unprepared - I neglected to bring any apples for all the sugared honey falling from your lips, husband.”_

_James snorts, and Miranda catches his eye, and Thomas feels completely at ease - here - with these two. He lifts his head in a silent plea to be fed and Miranda acquiesces, holding a grape just out of reach, so that he has to stretch his neck further to -_

“Tomlin, back to work!” 

Thomas comes back to himself, the sun feeling somehow too harsh and direct, even here under the shade of the orchard. The days are still long and hot and it feels wrong.

Trying to sink back into the daydream now is useless. He is on edge and jumpy and the feeling of contentment has vanished altogether, just like the loving ghosts who brought it. He feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t in a way that has nothing to do with his delay in returning to the field.

He knows it is likely the scene was a dream his subconscious created to soothe him. The winter which lies ahead will be filled with no such warmth and he will need all the comfort he can muster. 

Just like all the others, though, these visions _feel_ real. And he never dreams of anything other than happiness, when James and Miranda visit him. There is never a touch of the cruel or sinister as Peter insists had lived in them. Try as he may, Thomas cannot bring forth a memory that isn’t like the daydream had been - loving, joyful. Even the arguments are always sincere, things made of a desire to understand or enhance rather than undermine. 

He thinks of Miranda, and of James, rolling one of the persimmons he had been eating in his palm delicately. He must return to the field - but something in him hesitates. No, deliberately delays. He lifts the fruit over his head so that he has to lean back, tilt his chin upwards to let it fall in. He is both the giver and receiver in the indulgent display, and the taste on his tongue is bitter, almost sour. But the act itself feels delightfully sweet. 

\---------

Winter in Georgia, Thomas is relieved to discover, is a great deal milder than in England. Almost halfway through and the mud on the ground has yet to freeze into solid ruts, and there has been only one small dusting of snow. Although the warmth causes other problems in the form of deep, sucking mud and constant dampness, Thomas appreciates what he can. 

He has been set to putting planks across the more well used paths, planting them into the mud in hopes to prevent the horses and carts getting stuck. His work partner is one of the newer arrivals. Fair haired like Thomas himself, and even lankier, Timothy Gibbins is a slow but steady worker. Refuses to let the guards harass him into going a hairsbreadth faster than he wants to. Thomas tries - has tried since the beginning - to do the same, but something left over from the self-preservation he’d learned in Bethlem hangs over him. Despite his best efforts he finds that he hurries himself every time one of the guards passes by. 

The next time it happens, Gibbons mutters a fervent “fuck this,” and throws the plank down into the mud instead of placing it, splashing the passing guard with cold, murky water. 

“Watch what you’re doing, Gibbons.” Even though they aren’t meant for him the words send goosebumps down Thomas’ arms, the warning in them clear. The guards won’t discipline them for much, but they’re men given authority, and the man they answer to rarely leaves the sanctity of the main house.

“We’re going as fast as we can without killing ourselves. Lay the fuck off.” 

Thomas knows what’s about to happen before it does. So does Gibbons, he realizes as the other man braces his legs.

The butt of the guard’s rifle hits him squarely in the shoulder and he falls. “Mouth off again and I might see to it that today doesn’t count towards your term.” 

He moves on without waiting for a reply, which is just as well since the one Timothy mutters under his breath would certainly count as a repeated offense.

“Why do you do that?” Thomas asks as Gibbons wipes the mud from his face and rolls the shoulder where the guard had hit him. 

“Because it’s not fucking right. They think it’s funny breathing down our necks. I’m here because I defaulted on a debt but we’re treated like fucking reprobates.”

 _Some of us are just that,_ Thomas thinks. But he doesn’t say it. Not many of the men here are like Robert and himself, prisoners of a political game. More of them are like this man, who fell on hard times or committed petty crimes and were sent here with a promise of freedom after their sentences were completed.

“And besides,” Gibbons continues, drawing Thomas back out of his reverie. “Even if I were a murderer, doesn’t mean he can get his jollies lording over us like we’re animals.” 

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“No? Maybe there should be.” 

Robert’s words echo through Thomas’ mind. This isn’t right. They all know it. Much as Thomas was relieved when he learned that Oglethorpe refused to purchase actual slaves, the debtors and prisoners he employs instead are rarely permitted to leave. Thomas has never seen one leave, at any rate. Oglethorpe keeps them in line with fear, preaches mercy, and practices hypocrisy. It isn’t right or fair or any of the things the civilized world calls itself. 

“Maybe so,” he agrees. 

\---------

The third day, Thomas decides, is the worst. Every week Oglethorpe employs the local surgeon to shave the men, and Thomas has decided that the third day after his visits is the worst. The hair growing unfamiliar on his face and neck prickles and scratches, and irritates his skin until he is constantly uncomfortable. He tries to avoid touching his face, tries to keep his hands from picking and exploring the new territories he had known so differently in his old life. But on the third day, it is always the worst. 

\-------

Movement by the gates draws Thomas’ attention from weeding the fields. Now that spring has set in there is more work than they could possibly hope to accomplish with their numbers, so he isn’t surprised to see a small group of new men being led inside the gates. What holds his attention is the man leading them. Peter stands at the front of the group, greeting Oglethorpe with a warm, familiar handshake. The image makes Thomas nauseous. 

He watches Peter and the men disappear along the road as long as he can before returning to his weeding. With every clump he counts back through the new arrivals, and finds that with many of them, there had been a coinciding visit from Peter. Not every one. Their visits have been growing more sporadic as Thomas refuses to adjust - be grateful for the life afforded to him here, in Peter’s words. But enough of them that it cannot be coincidence.

Before now he’s chalked Peter’s sporadic visits up to how long the journey is and his duties as governor. Now, he wonders if Peter was too ashamed to face Thomas, after having delivered some number of men to a similar fate. 

Peter has taken on a rather different view of what constitutes a benevolent society than the ones he had expressed in London. He makes a point of telling Thomas about the trials of pirates he holds - now such spectacles they have started to draw people even from outside Charlestown, if the name of the pirate is big enough. 

The first time he tells Thomas with satisfaction that he has hung a pirate of Nassau, Thomas knows it is not a delusion that he hears James’ voice clear in his head. 

“Did he repent?” Thomas remembers asking. 

“They never do,” came the reply. 

Thomas isn’t sure if the change is a side effect of his new found power or if he has always held these views, and just never expressed them to Thomas as such. But Peter is no longer the man Thomas thought he knew. Fitting, he supposes, since Thomas bears very little resemblance to his old self, either. 

The more time which passes between Peter’s visits, the more his memory starts to clear and return, and with it his conviction. The more he wonders how on earth Peter knew he could send Thomas to this place at all. 

Thomas recalls thinking, before, that perhaps Peter didn’t understand the situation he had put Thomas in - that perhaps he really did believe that he was improving Thomas’ life by sending him here instead of to freedom. Now, the weight of the truth reveals his still-present naivety. Peter knew. He just didn’t care. 

Didn’t care, or thought Thomas and his depravity too far beneath civilized society to deem a choice in the matter. They had needed more bodies, and so Peter had provided. 

Peter departs that day without speaking to him. 

\----------

The ghosts, he has to assume, are not the ones who lied, then. If they truly do haunt him he relegates them to benevolancy - for nothing that brings him as much comfort could truly mean him harm. 

\-----------

Sometimes Thomas wonders if James is still among the crew of Captain Flint. If he is still a pirate. If he is still alive. 

Peter doesn’t say, on any of his visits. He doesn’t ever mention James or Miranda and it is like they have ceased to exist. 

Thomas has not dared ask if there is a pirate McGraw among the infamous crew when new men come, paying their way into acceptance from the others with news of the outside world. 

Pirates are always a source of interest, but few have names besides the captains. And Flint’s name is chief among them - his blood thirstiness and violence a subject of great interest to the men who wish to, but cannot, visit the same violence on the men who have wronged them. 

But a McGraw is never mentioned, and Thomas doesn’t know a hope he could hold onto if it is because James is dead. So he does not ever mention James to anyone but the shadows who visit him in his mind’s eye.

There are plenty of stories of the pirates of Nassau, though. Particularly, of Captain Flint - and if he cannot get stories directly about James, those will have to do. There are stories of how Flint leaves no ship un-plundered, does nothing by halves, and that surely half the spoils of the new world travel through his hands. How he is a demon shrouded in darkness who employs other monsters on his ship. How they are all scarred and brutal, with extra, pointed, teeth and others so monstrously tall they tower over the bow of the ship even before boarding. 

Flint’s ship - The Walrus - has just as many stories told about her. They say she is capable of chasing down any prey, huge yet nimble in the water with her demon captain. That her crew climbs aboard with giant hooks like tusks. And if the captured crew fights back, that she seizes them in her jaws, coming alive herself to sink the ship and crew with her guns and fire. 

Something in this amuses Thomas, and he thinks that such a mythical crew would suit James. He remembers, even, a story James had once told him about walruses. Of a time his grandfather had gone up north, hired by a fishing expedition in the northern waters when they had encountered one of the morse behemoths, and how - after they had tried to kill its cub, the thing had nearly sunk their ship in its rage. 

Imagining James on a ship like that, and Miranda perhaps living well off the spoils - spoils that in a roundabout way are owed her as the wife of a Hamilton, is just enough of a comfort that between the stories and his ghosts, he manages not to miss the real people so much. 

\-------

“That’s not true.” 

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. He doesn’t even know what he’s responding to, in truth. The guard looks up in surprise - it’s the first time Thomas has spoken to one of them without being directly spoken to since he arrived. 

“What?”

Thomas can feel his body start to shake, and he can’t make himself repeat the words. The guard who had been talking approaches, and Thomas tries to stop himself from shrinking back. He’s only partially successful. 

“Do you have an opinion, Mr. Tomlin? Thought you were a mute.” Thomas tries to remember what was said that had made him react. What the truth had been. But he can’t, and now it’s not important to him to be right, he just wants to avoid the trouble. He has to keep his head down - to stay as unremarkable as possible. He keeps his eyes averted and when it’s clear he’s not going to speak again the guard moves away with a satisfied grunt. 

That night Thomas will lie awake and run the scenario through his head, again. Each time he comes up with a different answer to the guard’s question. By the time he falls asleep, he’s almost convinced himself one of those scenarios happened, instead of the one that did. He’ll wake up the next morning and vomit when he realizes he doesn’t know what happened the day before. 

\-------

_And God said: ‘Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good._

He’s been staring at the beginning of Genesis for what feels like hours. He’s beginning to feel like that dry land, like something has been pulled from him. It’s not a perfect metaphor - he’s sure he could find a better one if Oglethorpe allowed them any books besides this one - but something in it has stopped him. Stuck him to this page. He knows if he continues he’ll get to Adam - and Eve. To the story he had meant to read, if only because the memory attached to it comforts him. But here he is, stuck pondering the divide between sea and land. Who he is now - all these vast swaths of dry land, uncovered and laid bare without their oceans to cover them. Of all the things that live in that deep water he has no access to, no boat nor oars to reach them with. And he’s not strong enough to swim.

“Doesn’t reading a book usually work better if you turn the pages?” Robert. Thomas lets out the breath he’s been holding. 

“Probably. Although by this point I really should have this one memorized.” 

Robert laughs and shifts from foot to foot. Thomas looks up from the pages to meet his eye just as he begins to speak.

“We could use your help. You’re the smartest one here - by measures.” This again, then. 

“Book smarts aren’t what you need, Robert. And I’m the last person you should be turning to for advice on how to lead a revolt.”

“Why not? You’ve read about all of them, haven’t you? All those historical battles? You can think of the logistics if you don't want to fight. But we need a planner, and I’m not good at that sort of thing.”

“I think you’ll find my plans of late haven’t worked out too well, either.” He gestures with the bible as his mind turns back to London. Oceans away, and more.

He can’t explain the hesitation he feels any better, and Robert won’t push again, not like Thomas would have. Thomas hides behind that knowledge and feels cowardly.

For all of his posturing and drive, Robert is very much still a young man at heart, easily spooked out of a conversation by silence. And he respects Thomas. Thomas doesn’t mean to discourage him. 

He looks down at the bible still in his hand, his finger still between the pages of Genesis.

“It’s not that I don’t want to help.” 

“Then what? You say you support us - I know you think that Oglethorpe is a bloviating hypocrite. So what’s stopping you from helping us do something meaningful with our lives?”

_The last time I led a plan for a revolution -_

“Are you familiar with the story of Icarus?” Robert nods. “He’s not exactly the one you want leading the charge, is he?”

Robert pauses at that. It’s the closest Thomas has ever come to mentioning his past. 

“Is that what happened to you? Flew too close to the sun?” 

Thomas thinks of blinding smiles and passion that had scorched him to his core at times. Of the feeling that with James at his side, anything was achievable. Of Miranda’s warnings. _Warnings._ Of Peter, and his insistence that Miranda and James had betrayed him. Of how it still feels a bit like he’s falling some days.

“Something like that.”

Robert takes a breath and lets it out, frustration clear. 

“Alright. But - Thomas.” Robert pauses again. Thomas recognizes the thinker’s face. “What if he’d been able to right himself?” It’s thin. They both know it, but Thomas appreciates the gesture. Robert truly has been a friend to him, here. He looks down again at the Bible. Still in the beginning - of how Eve had been tempted. Like Icarus with his sun, and Eve with her apple. 

“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” he repeats, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

\---------

“Where else was I supposed to send you?”

“I was never mad, Peter.”

“Perhaps not, but you were a liability your father and I feared would drag us all down.”

“You made me think that I was mad - seeing visions and making up things that had nothing to do with reality! You made me believe James” -he has to stop and draw a shaky breath against the anger blooming in his chest. “- that Miranda and James had betrayed me!” It feels good to yell, to be some semblance of the man he had been, who had felt justified in his anger. It has been years since Thomas has felt this feeling but _oh,_ he is feeling it now. 

“You could not - would not - realize the danger, especially with McGraw siding with you against any better judgement he should have had. I had to seperate the two of you before you caused us all to be tried for treason. If that is not madness I do not know what else to call it! ” 

“Do you know where they are?” 

“No.”

“Would you tell me, if you did?”

“I can’t see how the information would be of any help to you.”

“No, you wouldn’t. To know that the people I loved, who loved me, are alive and safe. Why would that information help me.”

“You must understand why I wouldn’t tell you, even if I did know.”

“When was the last time you spoke to them? Please just tell me this.” 

“It was years ago, before you’d left Bethlem. I haven’t spoken to them since I informed them of your death.” 

At that, Thomas feels a hand close around his throat. “They think I’m dead.” 

“Your father and I thought it best that they not have any reason to want to return.”

“So you told them I was dead?” _Oh, God._ He tries not to picture it; what James and Miranda might have done when they’d received a letter like that. 

And, too, the knowledge that he will never see them again. If they’d thought him alive, perhaps - but there would be no possible reason for either of them to seek out a ghost. 

“It was for their own good. And now I am telling you, for yours, to let this go.”

“Leave.” 

“You must understand that what I did, I did for all of our safety. We are all alive - and that is more than I can say for what would have become of you and your Lieutenant had you continued on the road you were on.”

“I said, leave. I can rationalize why you did it. I can even understand why you would - for your own personal reasons. What I cannot do is stomach the thought of looking at the man responsible for all that has happened to me, knowing you could have spared James and Miranda further torment but didn’t. That sort of needless carnage of the soul, I cannot forgive.”

“Thomas -”

“Peter.” And Thomas has never, not in the entirety of his time at Bethlem, nor the years he has spent here, felt so close to violence. Peter must see something of that truth in his eyes, because he leaves. 

Robert meets him when he returns to the barracks and immediately recoils. 

“Jesus, Tom, what happened?”

Thomas feels ill, cannot do anything except wave Robert off, retreating to his bunk and turning to stare at the wall. By the morning he hopes he will be all right but now, he mourns. Everything. Peter’s betrayal, the certainty that his loves have left him. His fate here. He stares at the wall and lets the tempest of his emotions rage inside him. There will be time to sort them out, but for now, he lets them crash over him, an overfull river, flooding its banks. 

It feels final.

This realization that Peter has, all along, been keeping from him that James and Miranda think him gone. The hope that there will be no rescue. No reunion. No chance at all of returning to anything of his old life. 

He had thought he had been over it. Had thought he’d put any hope of living outside this place out of his mind. Only now does he recognize the last shred of his old self still hanging on - listening for scraps of news about James, Peter’s friendship, not wanting to fully commit to anything to do with a rebellion. He realizes, it has all been in service of waiting for his old life to resume, somewhere deep within his heart. Waiting for the madness to clear, to see the truth and be able to have Peter free him. 

Hours later, after the waves have crested and crashed and receded, he feels empty. And into that emptiness he lets it go. His loves, the longing for them, the hope that there can be anything but what is, here. He cannot be the old Thomas, anymore. The one waiting for them. Like he hopes they are - carrying on somewhere - so must he. He doesn’t sleep, but when the others start to rouse for the day, he does too. Heavier. But in a way that means his steps fall sure. They are not heavy with grief, but with purpose.

Robert eyes him with concern, and wariness. He must have heard the tears, sobs Thomas had let out at various points throughout the night. But that isn’t what Thomas needs, sympathy. He is all right, he realizes. Or, he will be. He meets Roberts eyes as he draws close.

“I’m with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me @ me: you will finish this goddamn fic if I have to tie you to a chair
> 
> We're FINALLY getting somewhere, and James IS going to turn up soon, I promise. But I have to admit that fuddling about in Thomas' time during the ten year gap is fun for me, so I'm milking it a little. There's also a plot in here, vaguely, somewhere, that I'm sort of setting up, sort of. You know. Vaguely. 
> 
> I have no idea if James named the Walrus or not but I'm going with he did because I like the idea of him naming both himself and his ship after just weird ass fucking shit who names their ship _The Walrus_ James. Who _does that_.


End file.
